The fact that politicians are always vying for our hearts and minds as voters, has somehow distracted us from holding them accountable on their primary duty. That primary duty is to keep the nation and its citizens safe at all times.
In exercising this duty, the government provides us with public goods namely safety, and the rule of law including the judiciary. So we the people pay taxes to allow the government to serve us with these public goods which are common to all of us. We do so because we cannot as individual citizens establish our own little courts of law or set up own militaries to defend our borders. We cannot have our police departments serving us as families or individuals. The same applies to prisons. We cannot convict you and put you in prisons. We therefore mandate the state to carry out these functions to avoid chaos and instability
The other far reaching stuff that the government likes to flaunt is secondary to their basic duty. However this basic duty is not being treated with the seriousness it deserves. Instead the leadership would rather spend inordinate amount of time, energy and resources on a big, bloated and wasteful programmes where clearly protecting people, ranks lowly in the scheme of things. If that was not the case, why is it that among our politicians, you never see a councillor, Member of Parliament, cabinet minister, Vice president and the president himself , speak about rising crime including the alarming rates of house break especially in the nation’s capital. All you have ad infinitum, is media photo opportunities of politicians handing out free stuff. And again if the idea is to help people out of their difficult circumstances, then you stop giving out handouts and focus on skills and opportunity.
We have reached a point where incidents of car break-ins, burglary and snatching of cell phones and ladies handbags are no longer deemed important or even newsworthy. The victims of these crimes have all but given up on law enforcement. If during the course of invading your privacy, the intruders do not harm you or your family, it no longer serves any purpose to lodge a case with the police. If the police are to be contacted it would usually be for expediency of acquiring a report to submit an insurance claim. Beyond that there is just no utility in calling them because they would either arrive on the scene many hours after the act or just not show up at all. On the rare occasion that they come, they are highly unlikely to give you any feedback down the line. To them you become another statistic waiting to be added to the weekly crime report filed with head office.
This is an epic failure by the state to protect its people. It leads to a basic question of the recourse that people have when the state fails on its primary duty. How do you protect yourself when you know that the police are not going to come to your aid in time? Are you then not the first line of defence for your family when something bad happens in your house?
Without this basic sense of safety, people are constrained from pursuing their livelihoods. In a country where the people have no means to be the first line of defence, the state must begin to pull up their socks and do much better. It is time to remember that when everything else fails, the state cannot run away from its first job unless people have the right to bear arms.
